Rod Stewart: Stomach Pump After Gay Encounter Never Happened

BY Neal Broverman

October 25 2012 2:09 PM ET

Katie Couric isn't afraid to ask the hard questions — maybe that's why her new talk show's ratings are so good — and she recently asked singer Rod Stewart if he had his stomach pumped after a wild night with sailors in San Diego.

The long-standing rumor was debunked by the Brit singer, who blamed it on a vengeful former publicist.

"I used to have this guy work for me, he was a gay publicist," Stewart told Couric. "He’s dead now, so he might be watching. I had to fire him because he did something terrible, which I won’t go into. So he wanted revenge, so he started this rumor about me, and it was horrible because my kids were at school. So that is definitely not true ... I’m as heterosexual as they come."